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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
embalming, and an arc which bends towards something:
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Aug 2 2025, 7:11pm
Views: 5947
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embalming, and an arc which bends towards something
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I remember reading this about the embalming dea, and being a bit surprised about it. It's an interesting contrast to how the elves are presented in the text: you can easily think of them as enriching Middle-earth, and as a civilising presence.
Typical Tolkien to be all complicated about things. Perhaps more than one perspective has some merit?
I think that what is wrong with 'embalming' in Middle-earth is that it it is an attempt to hold back the Music. Because of The Music, there is canonically in Arda something that is a matter of dispute in the Primary world: an arc which bends towards.... But what it bends towards is presumably whatever Eru had in mind -- you may not like it, and it may not feel like justice to this person or tha one. But trying to stop it will turn out to have been part of the music all along....
So understandably this embalming stuff doesn't work -- doesn't work the way the elves wanted, at least whatever it may have hypotetically contributed to the Music -- and in the end they have to pack it in .
'The long defeat' Elrond calls it.
But has it all been for naught? Has no good come of it at all? Was it only ever selfishness? - arguably not.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Aug 2 2025, 7:14pm)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by noWizardme
(Gondolin) on Aug 2 2025, 7:14pm
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